1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image-taking apparatus that includes an imaging device and forms a subject image on the imaging device thereby generating image signals.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, image-taking apparatus have been generally provided with a light-emitting means that emits fill light when the brightness of field is low. Many of the light-emitting means include, as a light source, a xenon tube whose emission spectrum is close to sunlight. However, since use of the xenon tube leads to increase in power consumption and size, in some of the latest mobile telephones with a camera, a low-power LED is employed as a light source for shooting with fill light, instead of the xenon tube (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-179808).
Meanwhile, some of recent digital cameras are equipped with, as light sources, both a xenon tube that emits a relatively large amount of fill light for shooting and an LED that emits a relatively small amount of fill light for shooting as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 2006-119264, 2005-210723 and 2005-301217. According to the techniques disclosed in these documents, a small amount of fill light is emitted from an LED when a subject distance is shorter as compared to a predetermined distance, and a large amount of fill light is emitted from a xenon tube when a subject distance is longer as compared to the predetermined distance.
Some of the digital cameras are equipped with a sensitivity setting section capable of setting any desired level of sensitivity. In this type of digital camera, the higher the set sensitivity is, the smaller the amount of fill light for shooting is.
However, if any of the techniques disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 2006-119264, 2005-210723 and 2005-301217 is employed in the digital camera provided with the sensitivity setting section, the amount of reflected light becomes larger than expected at certain levels of sensitivity. In this case, image signals output from some of multiple light-receiving elements forming an imaging device are saturated during signal processing, thereby causing the so-called “white out” phenomenon. Occurrence of the white out phenomenon results in a shot image with white dots.